What kind of rat keeps visiting sewers even though they are sewers, only to continuously complain that they are sewers - even when they are not sewers?!

Dude, you can leave any time you want if you don't like it. In fact, other than the extra traffic that forums get when easy targets such as you present yourselves (which we probably all appreciate on some level) I don't think anyone will miss you.

Gloominary wrote:Not only have we presented evidence helping to prove banning guns in the USA probably wouldn't make Americans safer, but you haven't presented any evidence banning guns would help make any other country safer, you're just asserting it would, in fact, I posted a graph a little earlier that suggested the contrary, that there's a correlation between countries with fewer guns and higher homicide rates.

You did? I just had another skim and still only saw graphs with zero correlation, which I have already commented on, so on the off-chance that I still might be missing something, can you please direct me to the graph you mean?

we could arm our prisoners and expect the equalization of power to secure peace.

I don't think anyone was presenting this as a serious idea, but it is a good example of applying something that - let's say it was rational - to people who are sometimes (if not often) irrational. Sometimes the reasoning that "the other person has a gun" isn't enough to deter people from using theirs anyway. Hence gang violence never ceasing.

We will never get rid of social inequality as it will always exist however we could in practical terms severely limit it if we wanted to keeping it at a minimum. The capitalist paradigm of society however doesn't believe in limiting it since in all reality it thrives on social inequality and loves it. In capitalism there is hyper competition in all facets of living where it triumphantly celebrates its winners and loves dragging its losers everywhere in defeat/mockery for public showing.

In such a culture or paradigm the losers are poked and prodded in every facet of existence making sure they can have pride in nothing, their entire self worth is stripped away from them. Their entire sense of self and personal identity eroded into nothingness.

Of course we wonder why people crack up and violently snap on others when we have a culture like this that it's absurd to even ask why to begin with. No, instead of focusing on socio economic dilemmas which I believe is the real origin of all this pent up rage we instead talk about disarming this portion of the population keeping them well medicated, of course this does nothing addressing the overall issues and will accomplish nothing but for the ignorant along with those that control this society that's good enough for the status quo to remain in place. In all reality we can throw all the poisonous medications on this portion of society in the world and it will accomplish nothing in the long run.

Right, guns aren't contributing to violence, if anything they're deterring it, and while bullying and bad drugs are contributing to a particular and peculiar kind of violence (spree shootings), and (radical) Islam is contributing to another kind of violence (terrorism), what's contributing to general violence in society is the enormous, and accelerating disparity between people of higher and lower (socio)economic status.There will always be violence, even if society was 100% fair, of course it could never be 100% anything, but we could be taking steps to reducing poverty, instead we're doing just the opposite.

Neither the left nor the right want to seriously tackle this issue, they'd rather talk about anything else: guns, abortion, gay marriage, radical Islam, 'white privilege' *cringes.At the end of the day what matters most is: are workers starving, or struggling to survive, or can they live comfortably, decently? It's peoples needs that matter most, but don't expect the banksters and bureaucrats to know the first thing about needs.

The right's solution is to lower taxes for the middle class, or at least that's what they say, of course they're more interested in lowering taxes for the rich, and the left's solution is to throw the workers a few crumbs, or at least that's what they say, of course they're more interested in corporate welfare than social welfare.And when they do throw us a few crumbs, they do it in such a way that it hurts the middle class more than the rich, when it could very easily benefit both the working, and middle class.And that's how the left and the right are basically on the same team, they want to keep the classes fighting amongst themselves...and the races, and the religions, and the sexes, so neither of us ever get anywhere save more impoverished, because we think the only way we can emancipate ourselves is by screwing over another group of people that're just as oppressed as we are.

If we want to understand the elite and their modus operandi, it can be summed up simply as: divide and rule, controlled opposition.We all know we're being fucked over.What we need then is either real, radical socialism, and/or to wait for things to collapse of their own volition.either way, things are going to change, they have to, there's a limit to how much the lower classes, and the environment can take, as I've been saying the only real question is: when?

You did? I just had another skim and still only saw graphs with zero correlation, which I have already commented on, so on the off-chance that I still might be missing something, can you please direct me to the graph you mean?

We will never get rid of social inequality as it will always exist however we could in practical terms severely limit it if we wanted to keeping it at a minimum. The capitalist paradigm of society however doesn't believe in limiting it since in all reality it thrives on social inequality and loves it. In capitalism there is hyper competition in all facets of living where it triumphantly celebrates its winners and loves dragging its losers everywhere in defeat/mockery for public showing.

In such a culture or paradigm the losers are poked and prodded in every facet of existence making sure they can have pride in nothing, their entire self worth is stripped away from them. Their entire sense of self and personal identity eroded into nothingness.

Of course we wonder why people crack up and violently snap on others when we have a culture like this that it's absurd to even ask why to begin with. No, instead of focusing on socio economic dilemmas which I believe is the real origin of all this pent up rage we instead talk about disarming this portion of the population keeping them well medicated, of course this does nothing addressing the overall issues and will accomplish nothing but for the ignorant along with those that control this society that's good enough for the status quo to remain in place. In all reality we can throw all the poisonous medications on this portion of society in the world and it will accomplish nothing in the long run.

Right, guns aren't contributing to violence, if anything they're deterring it, and while bullying and bad drugs are contributing to a particular and peculiar kind of violence (spree shootings), and (radical) Islam is contributing to another kind of violence (terrorism), what's contributing to general violence in society is the enormous, and accelerating disparity between people of higher and lower (socio)economic status.There will always be violence, even if society was 100% fair, of course it could never be 100% anything, but we could be taking steps to reducing poverty, instead we're doing just the opposite.

Neither the left nor the right want to seriously tackle this issue, they'd rather talk about anything else: guns, abortion, gay marriage, radical Islam, 'white privilege' *cringes.At the end of the day what matters most is: are workers starving, or struggling to survive, or can they live comfortably, decently? It's peoples needs that matter most, but don't expect the banksters and bureaucrats to know the first thing about needs.

The right's solution is to lower taxes for the middle class, or at least that's what they say, of course they're more interested in lowering taxes for the rich, and the left's solution is to throw the workers a few crumbs, or at least that's what they say, of course they're more interested in corporate welfare than social welfare.And when they do throw us a few crumbs, they do it in such a way that it hurts the middle class more than the rich, when it could very easily benefit both the working, and middle class.And that's how the left and the right are basically on the same team, they want to keep the classes fighting amongst themselves...and the races, and the religions, and the sexes, so neither of us ever get anywhere save more impoverished, because we think the only way we can emancipate ourselves is by screwing over another group of people that're just as oppressed as we are.

If we want to understand the elite and their modus operandi, it can be summed up simply as: divide and rule, controlled opposition.We all know we're being fucked over.What we need then is either real, radical socialism, and/or to wait for things to collapse of their own volition.either way, things are going to change, they have to, there's a limit to how much the lower classes, and the environment can take, as I've been saying the only real question is: when?

Until then, expect a lot more violence, in the long run.

This is where your favored democracy fails my friend and why I have chosen my current set of political beliefs. This crude destructive system will continue as long as it can until it can't anymore, let us hope its destruction will come quickly in our lifetime.

The temple mount will be rebuilt in Jerusalem and all the nations of the world will be ruled from there. All races, cultures, leaders, and nations will come to bow before the new messiah yet to come. All will come to know the chosen of God who refer themselves as Jews. For every Jew there will be a thousand goyim that will be their slaves as it was ordained by God. Every man, woman, and child will convert to Zionism.

Cognitive dissonance within Trump supporters and his inner circle? Say it isn't so.

There will be more cognitive dissonance within the next few years that I can guarantee you.

Last edited by Zero_Sum on Fri Feb 23, 2018 1:54 am, edited 1 time in total.

The temple mount will be rebuilt in Jerusalem and all the nations of the world will be ruled from there. All races, cultures, leaders, and nations will come to bow before the new messiah yet to come. All will come to know the chosen of God who refer themselves as Jews. For every Jew there will be a thousand goyim that will be their slaves as it was ordained by God. Every man, woman, and child will convert to Zionism.

If you cared to run a correlation between any of these stats, you'd notice very close to zero correlation as I said before. Looking at a handful of outliers doesn't show a trend or a rule, it shows some anomalies. So back to my ponderings over what the zero correlation could mean to both pro- and anti-gun advocates....

But if you want to go into why about 10% of all countries that have around 10% gun ownership still have high gun homicides, then sure, we can look at them...

Personally I'd rather talk about my post on the previous page about what the anti-gun stance actually is, or at least what mine is.

Silhouette wrote:What's in question is that, once guns are available, damage is far easier to cause and the potential to damage more severely and in more numbers is far more present - intentionally or by accident, on yourself or on others.

I agree but it's a subjective slippery slope on what constitutes "potential to damage more severely and numerously". If ARs fell off the earth, I'd never notice, but once that's established, then where does it stop?

But the danger of saying "well in that case let places like Kennesaw have their guns" is that they may escape Kennesaw if people move, steal or trade outside an otherwise safe haven,

Yes, that's true and it argues for focusing on other causes because you'll never sterilize the public of guns. All you'll succeed in doing is driving the market underground like the drug war has with drugs, take people's rights, and still not guarantee any measurable element of safety. Essentially a 2nd monster will have been created to fight the first and then not only would we still be subject to mass shootings, but we'd also be subject to governmental persecution.

and unstable or mentally ill people can move into Kennesaw and ruin their track record.

Then it would be like the Texas shooter who was an atheist in a bible-thumping town and consequently snapped. The absolutists and relativists cannot get along peacefully.

So I still cannot be pro-gun for places like Kennesaw for the reason I stated in the previous mini-paragraph.

Glad you're around to argue your side of it.

This is the same reason why we have speed limits even for responsible, capable and well-intentioned drivers. It's those irresponsible, incapable and ill-intentioned drivers who ruin it for everyone - and that sucks! But we accept it because it's our reality. Freedom with certain things is practical, and with other things it is not.

First it's speed limits and then seat belt laws and then after we've gotten acclimated to that tradeoff of freedom for security, now we have banned smoking in the car with children. What's next? It's the incremental taking of freedom in effort to minutely control every aspect of humanity, but people still die; if not this then that. Nothing has really been accomplished except an authoritarian wetdream.

This is also why we reserve dangerous things to only the safest hands in many cases - e.g. surgery and healthcare in general.

Idiots are idiots regardless of accreditation. Those folks I went to school with... who didn't perform as well as I... they are the doctors and legislators.

We should do the same for guns being reserved only for the military and (better) trained policemen,

Those are the least of who should be armed. No sense in arming trained killers who wouldn't flinch before shooting someone because they've gotten used to it. Also, consider the sorts who pursue that line of work... the ones with few other options in life who decide the military may be the way out and then decide a sense of self-worth may be found in tossing one's weight around in harassing otherwise law-abiding citizens for trivial seatbelt violations as a career.

Every lawyer in the country will tell you "Do not talk to police!" Police can and will lie to you, entrap you, and are not your friend. Police are immoral by necessity of occupation and these are the sorts you would trust to not kill you? Naive. http://killedbypolice.net/ You're FAR more likely to be shot by a police officer than anyone else.

Serendipper wrote:Yup, but the argument that someone can successfully fend-off the gov is moot since many have tried and no one has succeeded since the 1700s during the Revolutionary War when the people fought-off the Brits who had to cross an ocean by sail wielding only muskets and a few cannons. Now their gov is in their backyard and infinitely more weaponized. Whether or not people have ARs is irrelevant to the outcome and a "well-regulated militia" can't exist for the implied purpose of guarding a free state.

You have to deal with PR however. I mean, look at what insurgents manage in Iraq. Add in then that the army and police are shooting americans, and you have heavy pr problems. No guns out there and the few who have can be written off more easily as terrorists. A large armed resistance, even with no hope of winning, can cause all sorts of problems maintaining order in the police and army. Not a few terrorists, not over quickly, not just weirdos, our neighbors and people will drop out of the army and not in small numbers. Even more so police. People watching will also get sick and questions the martial law, the military response, official stories.

Yeah, that's a good point. Can you really see that happening in the US? Iraq is one thing, but the US?

It sounds good, but if it were true, then we could arm our prisoners and expect the equalization of power to secure peace.

Interesting point, here's what I think: arming some types of people will deter violence, arming other types will entice it.

I think the act of arming folks only deters violence in certain situations. Like: everyone in my neighbor is probably armed, so it's not a good place to gamble on breaking into people's homes as you're too likely to be shot. But in other situations it won't matter, like: waiting for an armed individual to walk out of a store then sniping him from a distance. Arming is not necessarily a full-equalization of power and if every prisoner were issued a gun for protection, murders would go up because people have to sleep an can't watch every angle all the time. Then they'd ban together and shoot it out with the guards. It would be a nightmare.

In a disarmed situation, the bigger person has the advantage. In an armed situation, the most devious has the advantage. In the Wild West, those famed gun slingers weren't notorious for being great marksmen, but having callous disregard for life. Their claim to fame is that they would shoot you and sleep like a baby that night. That is also true in bar-brawlers who aren't necessarily the best fighters, but they don't mind hitting people and they always hit first. Fight fair only as a last resort.

Prisons tend to be made up of people who're more risk prone, meaning they're more willing to risk their lives and the lives of others to attain easy power and privilege, where as the general population tend to be made up of people who're more risk adverse.

I see your point, but I'm as ballsy as they come, yet have a sense of right, wrong, and fairness. I've camped in the wilderness by myself with bears looking at me. I blast through the woods at 60mph with no helmet. I say its the opposite... people who don't play fair are too scared to play fair. If the warrior really had balls, he wouldn't be a warrior because he'd have no fear to underpin the persona necessary to be a warrior. The art of intimidation: tattoos, piercings, shaved heads, rough talk, etc. All that exists to instill fear because they are afraid of what might happen if they didn't. So maybe the people in prison are the most scared among us.

I forgot who it was who said, "To discern what your enemy fears, see what means he uses to scare you." Something like that.

When you hand prisoners guns, they think more about the benefit: easy power/privilege, if I get lucky, me and my homies are going to kill peeps and take their shit, where as the general population will think more about the cost: easy come/easy go, if I don't get lucky, me and my friends are going to be killed while trying to take peoples stuff.

It's worrisome that so much of the population would bend over so easily in response to fear. It's a double-edged sword in that they are peaceful, but also willing to not fight for rights.

The harder people think/feel it is to get the things they want, especially the things they think/feel they need, and the larger the disparity between the haves/have nots, the less likely people will be willing play by the existing rules, or be nonviolent, opting for a different set of rules potentially more beneficial to them and their class, or no rules at all.

Stefan proved that wrong in the video I posted, which is counter-intuitive. Poverty and crime are inversely correlated. -0.57. I think what is correlated to poverty is suicide and drug use. If you feel hopeless, are you going to shoot someone else or yourself?

So a sense of entitlement from a prosperous society engenders violence. People don't know what it's like to actually starve and think hate speech is the biggest deal. It's not a feeling of hopelessness, but a feeling of righteousness, which leads to violence. Stefan correlates crime to broken families, r=.98 or so.

The difference between prisoners and other people is their held philosophies, tendencies, mindsets. So, peace comes to armed people not by the addition of arms, but from a philosophy of not using those arms to kill people which, somehow, coincidences with people who choose to arm themselves.

People who feel strongly about protection of the right to bear arms also feel strongly about not using those arms. And people who do not feel strongly about protecting the right to bear arms also do not feel strongly about not shooting people. Why that is so, I can only speculate. I suspect it has something to do with dogmatism vs open-mindedness and moral-relativism vs absolutism.

Absolutists are dogmatic in their beliefs and are not open-minded in discussion. They are not morally relative. They do not hold beliefs on reason and evidence, but assert their beliefs to be absolute; therefore they have no cognitive mechanism to undermine their own beliefs. Arguing with those sorts is futile, but they can be trusted not to shoot you for the same bullheaded reason.

Moral relativists are opposite. They're open-minded and therefore have a mechanism to change their mind. "Thou shalt not kill" is not absolute to them. If at some moment they deem you to be evil, then the ends of your extermination justifies the act of murder. Probably, because they know that about themselves, they seek to ban the means of killing.

That's my theory to explain why guns coincide with less use of guns.This is an interesting theory, and while it may work for America, I'm not sure it works for the rest of the world.

This is an interesting idea.While I think morality might play a role, if it does, it's probably secondary to fear.In the US it may be true that the people (typically more rural WASPs) who believe they have a right to guns are more moral in general than the people who don't, for genetic and/or religious reaosns, and/or it may be their morality differs, they believe the ends (power/privlege) never or very rarely justify the means (big government/violence).However, this isn't just a phenomenon in the US, all over the world, people seem to be at least as safe, if not safer in countries where the gen pop is more armed, rather than less, and personally I doubt this correlation between morality, or a peculiar kind of morality (duty ethics, means over ends) and guns exists across the board in every country.

It could be that people who choose to arm themselves also choose to stand on their own feet and therefore have a sense of integrity, not entitlement.

The people who choose to own guns also choose to regulate alcohol-use on sunday. They're in favor of the drug war and capital punishment. They're a colossal pain in the ass, but they won't kill you unless you attack them, which they will beg for you to do so they can have the opportunity to justifiably pump you full of lead, but they cannot until you make the first move. I think that is the main difference. There is no mechanism to go on a violent crusade.

They also accept consequences and shun handouts, which is a mechanism to relieve pressure rather than exploding in violent uproar out of a sense of entitlement.

It boils down to: Will you shoot someone under any circumstance other than self-protection or will you not? So we can divide people into two categories: those who will and those who won't.

Those who will... why do they will? What's the common variable to all shootings not out of self-protection or necessity? Is it righteousness? What else could it be?

Alan Watts said in the 60's that wars fought not out of good old fashioned greed, that is, ideological wars, they are the most evil and destructive. Of course he was referring to the war against communism and said it would be preferable for us to make war with Vietnam in order to capture all the beautiful young girls and bring them back home than to launch a crusade against communism.

So, how many shooters were out to capture the women or to pillage the village? None. They were all ideologically motivated.

Paddock shot a bunch of right-wingers at a country concertThe guy who shot the church in TX was atheist.The nightclub was an Islamist against gays.Columbine was a crusade against bullying.I'm not sure what prompted the FL school shooting, but it wasn't greed or poverty.

Idle hands are the devil's workshop and when kids sit around all day playing violent videos games for lack of any necessary chores because life is too easy, it allows time to develop a good sense of entitlement.

Gloominary wrote:So African Americans, for whatever reasons, genetic, environmental, I don't want to get into that here, it's unnecessary, are 8 times more likely to murder people than White Americans.At the very least this is part of the reason why America has a higher homicide rate than your average European Country, who doesn't have a large African (American) Population.

That's a good observation. I wonder if it's true that intelligent people are more likely to kill themselves than someone else. What are the murder rates vs suicide rates of japan? Murder rate = 6.2/100k and suicide rate = 26/100k. Japan is has the 3rd highest IQ by country (105). Switzerland is 101 and the US is 98. I bet one could correlate murder and suicide rates with iq.

If so, the murder problem could be ended with education, but then we'd have a suicide problem.

You can cure ignorance, but it's pretty hard to cure dumb.African Americans are less intelligent.

I see your point.

They're also more aggressive, they have more testosterone, and that's almost as certainly genetic as their frizzy hair is, at least in part.

Perhaps we could help lift the African American community out of poverty and ignorance,

People argue that it doesn't stick.

or perhaps we could give them anti-testosterone and estrogen pills to Asianize/feminize them,

Assuming it's hormonal.

or perhaps we could get them more involved in theatre, ballet and classical music instead of break dancing and gangsta rap,

That's hard to imagine lol

I don't know, but I do know what we shouldn't do, we shouldn't allow America's higher homicide rate to continue to be blamed on guns, when African Americans are several times more murderous than Latinos, who're several times more murderous than whites, which's at the very least a very big part of the reason why America has a higher homicide rate than the European mean.

That makes sense. It seems to suggest a correlation to iq. The dummies skew the stats. But it just occurred to me that none of the mass-shooters were black. Is there even one? Paddock was far from stupid. So blacks account for most of the generic shootings while whites account for the mass-shootings. Hmm...

If you cared to run a correlation between any of these stats, you'd notice very close to zero correlation as I said before. Looking at a handful of outliers doesn't show a trend or a rule, it shows some anomalies. So back to my ponderings over what the zero correlation could mean to both pro- and anti-gun advocates....

But if you want to go into why about 10% of all countries that have around 10% gun ownership still have high gun homicides, then sure, we can look at them...

Intuitively it looks a little better for the right than the left on this, but I'm going to examine the graph and statistics more carefully.

Personally I'd rather talk about my post on the previous page about what the anti-gun stance actually is, or at least what mine is.

Well the left really only has one non-reason for wanting to take guns away, where as the right has many reasons for wanting to keep them, so have fun trying to come up with some half-baked excuse on the fly so you can cling to your position, instead of relinquishing it in light of the facts.

Last edited by Gloominary on Fri Feb 23, 2018 2:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

This is where your favored democracy fails my friend and why I have chosen my current set of political beliefs. This crude destructive system will continue as long as it can until it can't anymore, let us hope its destruction will come quickly in our lifetime.

By democracy I meant something quite different than we have today, ideally at least, really we may have to form a new party within the existing political infrastructure.I meant either militias democratically running things, or a philosophically educated and trained constitutional oligarchy.

Cognitive dissonance within Trump supporters and his inner circle? Say it isn't so.

There will be more cognitive dissonance within the next few years that I can guarantee you.

Apparently you have no idea what cognitive dissonance is.

If someone who supports much of what Trump has said and done so far, then openly disagrees with something Trump now does, that is not "cognitive dissonance".

You really actually are as retarded as you seem, aren't you?

Correct. Cognitive dissonence can arise when one notices that Trump is going against things he said but noticing this means that one would have to question the idea of Trump on has and so one functionally does notice, while feeling a discomfort one tries to distract oneself away from. Pretty much every president has caused this kind of cognitive dissonance in his followers and not mildly. Obama and Trump both running to Wall Street with puckered lips and knee pads in place led to brief cognitive dissonance and then denial in a majority of americans. Clinton and the Bushes ran there just as fast, but this led to less cognitive dissonance.

Gloominary wrote:Intuitively it looks a little better for the right than the left on this, but I'm going to examine the graph and statistics more carefully.

What you're experiencing is confirmation bias. You're focusing on those exceptions and making a rule out of them to satisfy what you already believe. Calling it intuition lends it a limited amount of credibility, but implying a near zero correlation corresponds with your intuition that there is a correlation has no credibility.

Gloominary wrote:Well the left really only has one non-reason for wanting to take guns away, where as the right has many reasons for wanting to keep them, so have fun trying to come up with some half-baked excuse on the fly so you can cling to your position, instead of relinquishing it in light of the facts.

You were doing so well, implying you gave a damn about an objective analysis of your stats, but you immediately betray this as a token gesture by implying that you have after all already supplied facts that suggest it to be reasonable to relinquish any beliefs contrary to said facts. You still haven't examined the graph and statistics more carefully (like you said you would) and you're already claiming some kind of victory. I even read your initial version of the post before you edited it, which previously contained some remarkably ironic statements....

What you're experiencing is confirmation bias. You're focusing on those exceptions and making a rule out of them to satisfy what you already believe. Calling it intuition lends it a limited amount of credibility, but implying a near zero correlation corresponds with your intuition that there is a correlation has no credibility.

If the rule appears to be close to zero correlation between guns and homicides, and the handful of exceptions have far fewer guns and much more homicides, than that's still better for the right's position than if the handful of exceptions had much more guns and much more homicides.While I didn't crunch the numbers when I concluded it appeared to be a little better for the right's position than the left's, neither did you when you concluded it appeared to be neutral.

You were doing so well, implying you gave a damn about an objective analysis of your stats, but you immediately betray this as a token gesture by implying that you have after all already supplied facts that suggest it to be reasonable to relinquish any beliefs contrary to said facts. You still haven't examined the graph and statistics more carefully (like you said you would) and you're already claiming some kind of victory. I even read your initial version of the post before you edited it, which previously contained some remarkably ironic statements....

A very, very poor show.

You, consider, banning something when the data shows it's overwhelmingly more dangerous than safe, like crack and meth arguably are, not when it's shown to be neither more dangerous than safe, nor more safe than dangerous.

Are you going to say the places that have lots of gun control need it to keep people safe, and the places that don't have lots of gun control don't need it to keep people safe?And therefore we should have lots of gun control across the board, because at best, it'll make some places safer, and at worst, it won't make any places more dangerous? But at this point that's just your opinion, I could just as easily say the places that have lots of guns need lots of guns to keep them safe, and the places that don't have lots of guns don't need lots of guns to keep them safe.And therefore we should have lots of guns across the board, because at best, it'll make some places safer, and at worst, it won't make any places more dangerous.

I could say something like: in places where people are more prone to violence, committing dozens of murders per 100 000 people per year, guns deter them from committing even more violence, and in places where people are less prone to violence, guns neither deter them, nor entice them, but the data presented here thus far doesn't show any of that, it shows that it doesn't matter, much, altho we can examine it more thoroughly to see if subtler connections can be drawn.

Last edited by Gloominary on Sat Feb 24, 2018 1:58 am, edited 1 time in total.

Zero_Sum wrote:Ideas floating around now is teachers being able to do their jobs with conceal and carry permits having firearms on themselves.

If teachers are going to be armed, then librarians should be given silencers.

I don't know man, I've always thought of old librarian women as sawed off shotguns type of gals. Something about making huge bangs in the silent no talking areas of the library is just a guess.

The temple mount will be rebuilt in Jerusalem and all the nations of the world will be ruled from there. All races, cultures, leaders, and nations will come to bow before the new messiah yet to come. All will come to know the chosen of God who refer themselves as Jews. For every Jew there will be a thousand goyim that will be their slaves as it was ordained by God. Every man, woman, and child will convert to Zionism.

Leftists assume personal irresponsibility as the default position, therefore it makes perfect sense to a leftist that people should not be allowed to own guns. Leftists do not see adults, they see only weird hybrids of man-children, millennials with man buns and ironic T-shirt’s living with their parents, spending their time between Facebook, Snapchat and Starbucks.

That is how leftists see humanity. So obviously leftists can’t possibly frame any of these issues correctly. Leftism as an ideology actively militates against even the possible existence of adulthood, i.e. mature self-responsible and free citizenry.

UrGod wrote:Leftists assume personal irresponsibility as the default position, therefore it makes perfect sense to a leftist that people should not be allowed to own guns. Leftists do not see adults, they see only weird hybrids of man-children, millennials with man buns and ironic T-shirt’s living with their parents, spending their time between Facebook, Snapchat and Starbucks.

That is how leftists see humanity. So obviously leftists can’t possibly frame any of these issues correctly. Leftism as an ideology actively militates against even the possible existence of adulthood, i.e. mature self-responsible and free citizenry.

Republicans don't exactly believe in self-responsibility either, that's why they're always telling us what kind of drugs we can take, what kind of sex we can have, what kind of music we can listen to, what kind of religion we can practice (Islam is scary, etcetera), and when we can have an abortion, etcetera.Republicans are hardly more libertarian than democrats, they're both authoritarianism-lite in their own way.There's liberal, matriarchal fascism, and there's conservative, patriarchal fascism, and it'd be interesting to run through some of the differences and commonalities between the two.

Silhouette wrote:What's in question is that, once guns are available, damage is far easier to cause and the potential to damage more severely and in more numbers is far more present - intentionally or by accident, on yourself or on others.

I agree but it's a subjective slippery slope on what constitutes "potential to damage more severely and numerously". If ARs fell off the earth, I'd never notice, but once that's established, then where does it stop?

But the danger of saying "well in that case let places like Kennesaw have their guns" is that they may escape Kennesaw if people move, steal or trade outside an otherwise safe haven,

Yes, that's true and it argues for focusing on other causes because you'll never sterilize the public of guns. All you'll succeed in doing is driving the market underground like the drug war has with drugs, take people's rights, and still not guarantee any measurable element of safety. Essentially a 2nd monster will have been created to fight the first and then not only would we still be subject to mass shootings, but we'd also be subject to governmental persecution.

and unstable or mentally ill people can move into Kennesaw and ruin their track record.

Then it would be like the Texas shooter who was an atheist in a bible-thumping town and consequently snapped. The absolutists and relativists cannot get along peacefully.

So I still cannot be pro-gun for places like Kennesaw for the reason I stated in the previous mini-paragraph.

Glad you're around to argue your side of it.

This is the same reason why we have speed limits even for responsible, capable and well-intentioned drivers. It's those irresponsible, incapable and ill-intentioned drivers who ruin it for everyone - and that sucks! But we accept it because it's our reality. Freedom with certain things is practical, and with other things it is not.

First it's speed limits and then seat belt laws and then after we've gotten acclimated to that tradeoff of freedom for security, now we have banned smoking in the car with children. What's next? It's the incremental taking of freedom in effort to minutely control every aspect of humanity, but people still die; if not this then that. Nothing has really been accomplished except an authoritarian wetdream.

This is also why we reserve dangerous things to only the safest hands in many cases - e.g. surgery and healthcare in general.

Idiots are idiots regardless of accreditation. Those folks I went to school with... who didn't perform as well as I... they are the doctors and legislators.

We should do the same for guns being reserved only for the military and (better) trained policemen,

Those are the least of who should be armed. No sense in arming trained killers who wouldn't flinch before shooting someone because they've gotten used to it. Also, consider the sorts who pursue that line of work... the ones with few other options in life who decide the military may be the way out and then decide a sense of self-worth may be found in tossing one's weight around in harassing otherwise law-abiding citizens for trivial seatbelt violations as a career.

Every lawyer in the country will tell you "Do not talk to police!" Police can and will lie to you, entrap you, and are not your friend. Police are immoral by necessity of occupation and these are the sorts you would trust to not kill you? Naive. http://killedbypolice.net/ You're FAR more likely to be shot by a police officer than anyone else.

Sound thoughts. Thankfully the disarming of the US population is not going to happen, the 2nd amendment did fulfill its purpose, conservatives are wel armed and there will be war rather than EU styled tyranny. So perhaps, none of the two, just a restoration of sanity, some years down the line.

UrGod wrote:Leftists assume personal irresponsibility as the default position, therefore it makes perfect sense to a leftist that people should not be allowed to own guns. Leftists do not see adults, they see only weird hybrids of man-children, millennials with man buns and ironic T-shirt’s living with their parents, spending their time between Facebook, Snapchat and Starbucks.

That is how leftists see humanity. So obviously leftists can’t possibly frame any of these issues correctly. Leftism as an ideology actively militates against even the possible existence of adulthood, i.e. mature self-responsible and free citizenry.

Absolutely.

I wonder how much the death of God has to do with this. Obviously he didn't die on he right, but the Left really struggles with it, they do everything to keep themselves mental and moral children, to erect whatever pompous murdering figurehead presents itself to them above all of us, just to not have to actually exist.

Gloominary wrote:If the rule appears to be close to zero correlation between guns and homicides, and the handful of exceptions have far fewer guns and much more homicides, than that's still better for the right's position than if the handful of exceptions had much more guns and much more homicides.

Tell me exactly why fewer guns causally leads to more homicides in a handful of exceptional cases, and that this means that more guns causally leads to less homicides in general?

Be careful here. I have set up a minefield merely by presenting your so easily-reached conclusion within the context of your evidence. There's at least a few fallacies that you'll have to resort to to justify this one.

Gloominary wrote:While I didn't crunch the numbers when I concluded it appeared to be a little better for the right's position than the left's, neither did you when you concluded it appeared to be neutral.

Actually I did. That's why I'm baiting you into your own trap that you've set yourself. If you want to walk into it, then I can't stop you.